Johnston pushes ed bill without regard to best research

State Senator Michael Johnston, Colorado’s fact-free and research-be-damned education reformer, is at again. This time, Johnston has targeted early grades literacy with a bill (HB 1238) that would nearly mandate that kids behind in reading repeat their current grade. While the bill also envisions an aggressive approach to catching kids up, the research is unequivocal: retaining kids usually is a net negative approach.

The RAND Corporation published an exhaustive research review that looked at 91 different studies of holding kids back a grade. The results were unequivocally negative. Why does Johnston not do basic research before pushing laws that would effect tens of thousands of children and families, sometimes with lifelong adversity? There is an irresistible impulse among some education reformers to promote strategies with lots of intuitive appeal, an approach that redounds to their political benefit. But that craven expediency is often at odds with the best research, and can almost be depended upon to hurt students, teachers, and families with few resources.

Here are some of the conclusions from RAND’s 2009 report, completed for the New York City Department of Education, “Retaining Students in Grade— A Literature Review of the Effects of Retention on Students’ Academic and Nonacademic Outcomes:”

Relative to students who are promoted, retained students are more likely to be male, minority, younger than their peers, of low socioeconomic status, and living in poor households and single- parent families. They are also more likely to have poorer academic performance prior to retention; significantly lower social skills and poorer emotional adjustment; more problem behaviors, such as inattention and absenteeism; more school transfers; poorer health; and disabilities. Parents of retained students are more likely to have lower IQ scores and lower levels of cognitive functioning, lower educational levels, lower occupational levels, less commitment to parenting responsibilities for their children’s education, lower expectations of their children’s educational attainment, and less involvement in school.

In general, retention does not appear to benefit students academically. In most of the studies included here, we find negative relationships between retention and subsequent academic achievement. On the other hand, a few studies have found academic improvement in the immediate years after retention. Even so, these gains are often short-lived and tend to fade over time. Findings from the few studies using rigorous methods to adjust for selection bias have been mixed as well—with some showing short-term gains and others reporting gains that disappeared over time.